Is Charging $17 For A Pint Of Ice Cream Ever Justified?

If you’re a one-woman ice cream company (chef, delivery gal, publicist, and more), there’s nothing stopping you from charging whatever you want for your product. And if there’s a 1,500-person waiting list of customers, you can probably get them for a lot of money.

Such is the case with owner/founder/creator of Milkmade Ice Cream, Diana Hardeman, who charges nearly $17 a pint for her product.

In a video profile on CNNMoney, Hardeman shares how the taste of store-bought ice cream just wasn’t doing it for her anymore. So (cue Consumerist meme) she decided to just make her own at home, using local, fresh ingredients to create flavors like “sugar on snow” (maple ice cream layered with butternut ice cream) or the St. Patrick’s Day themed “Irish car bomb” (Guiness-based ice cream with a Bailey’s caramel).

Once she decided to start offering her tasty treats to others and received a bit of press coverage, she says she got 700 emails within one week. Now there are 1,500 hungry people waiting to get a membership to her service.

For $50, members get one of two flavor-of-the-month options delivered to their door by Hardeman herself during the first week of every month, for three months. There’s a two-pint option for $90. Right now she’s only delivering by bike in Manhattan, but hopes to expand to Brooklyn soon.

Catch the video below and see if you don’t get a bit of a hankering for some corn ice cream. But would you ever pay $17 for a pint of ice cream?